I translate my father's wiretaps for a living. I know exactly what a man sounds like in the eleven minutes before he says the true thing.

So when my brother turns up at my door at eleven at night owing three million dollars to the Romano family, I don't go into shock. I go into procedure. Nobody lets a man lose that much by accident. Somebody has been buying David, patiently, for a long time.

My father's answer is to put me on the table.

Nicholas Romano doesn't want the ring my father offers him. He wants a marriage, and he says it courteously, in my father's own study, with me standing right there.

I have one card left and about forty seconds to spend it. So I buy two weeks. Fourteen nights to learn the man before I marry him — and every one of those nights he arrives with something that proves he was listening.

He tells me he'd rather I feared the true thing than felt comfortable with a lie about it.

Then the wedding night comes, and I meet the other man he is.